Neil McCormick is the Telegraph's chief rock music critic. He is a best-selling author and a television and radio pundit. His memoir of a misspent youth as a failed rock star has been filmed as 'Killing Bono' (out in April). You can follow him on twitter @neil_mccormick.

Ironik, Tinchy Stryder, Dizzee Rascal: what's in a name?

Down at Metropolis studios in London, a new generation of British pop artists came together for a good cause this week, recording a charity single for War Child . Featured artists on an updated version of The Killers ‘All These Things That I’ve Done’ (with its theme appropriate chorus line, ‘I’ve got soul but I’m not a soldier”) included Pixie Lott, N-Dubz, Tinchy Stryder, Ironik, Bashy, VV Brown, Mpho, Chipmunk, Noisettes, and Kid British.

And if those are not exactly household names yet, they have had five number one hits between them, and so might be considered to be fashioning an entirely new form of Britpop. War Child director Ben Knowles described it (slightly tongue in cheek) as “Britain’s new urban posse”, and certainly they all have some links to hip hop and dance music, but I think something broader and brasher unites them. They are all post-internet artists, computer generation kids whose recordings show little regard for genre boundaries, mashing up influences from doo wop to grime. And they are also unashamedly cheesy in both their colourful images and noises they make. They dare to be ridiculous in ways that we haven’t really seen in pop since the eighties. Speaking to Mpho (pronounced “oompah”, apparently), she suggested that, as infants of the eighties, they have subliminally incorporated its values, while having no sense of “style shame”.

Dizzee Rascal

One thing they do all have, however, is funny names. I found myself at the studio door, saying “It was very nice to meet you, Ironik,” and wondering if he thought I meant it (what I really should have done was ask Ironik if he was keeping it real). And what kind of name is Tinchy Stryder, which seems to translate as Small Stepper (in the hip hop version of the moonlanding, it would have been ‘one tinchy stryde for man, one def bounce for mankind)? In terms of selling yourself to the public, Tinchy is surely only rivalled for modesty by fellow Brit Hop rapper Master Shortie. I wonder if he has thought about what will happen should his career actually lasts. Will he change his name to Mister Small when he grows up?

There is, of course, nothing new about pop star pseudonyms, although where once they were the exception, they now seem to be the rule. Maybe this is down to a strong urban / hip hop sense of branding (J-Lo is so much punchier as a selling point than Jennifer Lopez). Or maybe all the real names have been used up (I’m surprised that James Morrison’s advisers didn’t think to tell him we’ve already had one of those. He could have broken the mould for singer-songwriters and got some urban props by calling himself Sore Throat). What has really changed is that, in the past, artists usually adopted aspirational and even self-aggrandising stage names, from Billy Fury to Vanilla Ice. Even punk names like Sid Vicious and Richard Hell, for all the implicit humour of the combination of prosaic Christian names with provocative surnames, were suggestive of some personal fantasy (you just know that Sid really wanted to be seen as Vicious, despite suggestions that he was really just a drug addled softie). I am not sure you can say the same about Dizzee Rascal. As a hip hop name, it has none of the macho swagger of an Ice-T, Ghostface, Xzibit or Soulja Boy. It is almost Dickensian, a cheeky spin on the whole concept of alter ego, where your secret identity is not a super hero but a real reflection of your inner being. Amongst young British artists in particular (coming from a culture uncomfortable with self-aggrandisement), there is a great sense of play in pop names. The pseudonym has become a kind of art form in itself, an abstract indication of cultural allegiance that forces you to step over preconceptions and snatch at the shadowy message underneath. Today’s generation seem more, well, Ironik.

TEN GREAT POP PSEUDONYMS

Billy Fury (real name Ronald William Wycherley) One of impresario Larry Parne’s aspirationally named English rock’n’rollers, including Marty Wilde, Vince Eager, Dickie Pride and Duffy Power. Fury was the best of them, although the name was delightfully inappropriate, since his real appeal was as a broken hearted ballad crooner.

Engelbert Humperdink (real name Arnold George Dorsey). Why would anyone take the name of a German opera composer, particularly one who sounds like a humpbacked ogre from a fairy tale? Yet it seemed to work for Engelbert, perhaps because it was a name guaranteed to stick in your mind.

Captain Beefheart (real name Don Van Vliet). It is a name that tells you everything you need to know about the mix of elemental blues spirit and high art that the music conjures up, perfectly lending itself to a hugely descriptive adjective: Beefheartian.

Iggy Pop (Real name James Newell Osterberg). Got to be the coolest rock name ever, the combination of the rock lizard Iggy (from his high school band The Iguanas) with the simple, bold and universal Pop is immediately arresting. You just know a guy with a name like that is going to be interesting. Much better than his UK counterparts rather bland David Bowie, who got round that self imposed limitation (his real name was David Jones) by inventing fabulous alter egos like Ziggy Stardust and Alladin Sane.

Johnny Rotten (real name John Joseph Lydon). The original icon of UK punk, allegedly named for the state of his teeth and general lack of hygiene. The combination of the very rock’n’roll iconography of Johnny (as in Johnny B Goode) and the snarling, nasty surname made it a potent and very British inversion of the Larry Parne’s fantasy. Other great British punk names: Poly Styrene, Rat Scabies, Ari Up, Sid Vicious, Siouxie Sioux.

Bono Vox (real name Paul David Hewson). The great rock star was somewhat insultingly nick named by his friends after a Hearing Aid shop in Dublin. Pidgin latin for Good Voice, Bono is also Spanish for “voucher” and Finnish for “chewing gum”. Partnered onstage by The Edge, which is really a ridiculous name for anybody, let alone a middle aged bald man, but he carries off with some élan. It just seems a good thing that other members of Bono’s childhood gang didn’t join the band, including The Bottle Of Milk and Dave Id. Sting is the only other rock star I can think of who wore a vaguely insulting nick name as a badge of coolness.

Axl Rose (real name William Bruce Rose). The Guns N Roses frontman changed his name so that it would be an anagram for Oral Sex. It was the big hair metal eighties. Must have seemed like a good idea at the time. As bad self-inflicted stage names go, surely only rivalled by Sean Combs unfortunate Puff Daddy / P Diddy / Diddy / Puffy fiasco.

Ol’ Dirty Bastard (real name Russell Tyrone-Jones). The Wu Tang Clan had some great names, feeding into a self-invented martial arts mythology, including RZA, Method Man, Masta Killah, Tru Master and U God, but there is something genuinely powerful about the unashamed madness with which hip hop’s greatest crazy set out his stall.

Badly Drawn Boy (real name Damon Gough) The new British irony surely owes its origins to this intentionally ludicrous moniker with which the inventive British singer-songwriter saddled himself. It’s a sly, interesting name that sucks you towards it rather than shoving itself in your face. Now everyone’s at it.

Dizzee Rascal (real name Dylan Mills). Tells you a remarkable amount about him, without being self-aggrandising. This surname of almost Dickensian Englishness colliding with a head-spinning hip hop mis-spelling suggests a genre-bending wit, literacy, mischief, modernity, classicism, colour and British parochialism crossed with Americanised urban style. With a name that evocative, you don’t even need to listen to the records.